Ellipsis

Elided VPs and their antecedent VPs can mismatch in voice, with passive VPs being elided under apparent identity with active antecedent VPs, and vice versa. Such voice mismatches are not allowed in any other kind of ellipsis, such as sluicing and other clausal ellipses. These latter facts indicate that the identity relation in ellipsis is sensitive to syntactic form, not merely to semantic form. The VP-ellipsis facts fall into place if the head that determines voice is external to the phrase (...) being elided, here argued to be v P; such an account can only be framed in approaches that allow for the separation of syntactic features from the heads on which they are morphologically realized. Alternatives to this syntactic, articulated view of ellipsis and voice either undergenerate or overgenerate. (shrink)

VP-ellipsis and pseudogapping in English show a previously unnoticed asymmetry in their tolerance for voice mismatch: while VP-ellipsis allows mismatches in voice between the elided VP and its antecedent, pseudogapping does not. This difference is unexpected under current analyses of pseudogapping, which posit that pseudogapping is a kind of VP-ellipsis. I show that this difference falls out naturally if the target of deletion in the two cases differs slightly: in VP-ellipsis, a node lower than [voi(ce)] is deleted, while in pseudogapping (...) a node containing [voi] is deleted. Moreover, this analysis accounts for a new observation concerning the distribution of floating quantifiers in these two constructions. (shrink)

This paper argues that verb phrase ellipsis requires contrast. The central observation is that ellipsis is ungrammatical in tautologous conditionals; e.g., *_If John wins, then he does_. Ellipsis is correctly ruled out by a focus-based theory of ellipsis (Rooth 1992a, b ), but one that crucially imports focus’s requirement for contrast: an elliptical constituent must have an antecedent that is not merely an alternative to it, but a ‘proper’ alternative. An explanation in terms of contrast failure proves superior to alternative (...) explanations in terms of triviality and matching form. Showing as much catalogues what counts for contrast in ellipsis, encompassing negation, questions, and intensionality. Subjecting ellipsis to a contrast requirement is in direct conflict with the traditional analysis of MaxElide effects (Takahashi and Fox 2005 ), favouring alternative explanations (e.g., Jacobson 2019a, b ), perhaps in terms of contrast itself (Griffiths 2019 ). Overall, this paper establishes that contrast has explanatory power in ellipsis licensing. (shrink)

We propose a novel solution to anaphora and ellipsis resolution using multi-sorted first order logic. Our theory is proof-theoretic, employing methods from the study of dialogical logic. The first order propositions are extracted from reduced lambda terms, which are themselves derived from Lambek Categorial Grammar proofs.

In this article I consider some recent objections raised against the syntactic treatment of negation in English multiclausal structures, in particular what has been called NEGraising. I argue that the objections based on pronominalisation and ellipsis presented in the recent literature do pose a problem for syntactic accounts of the mechanisms of so-called NOT-transportation that rely on a rule of leftwards movement, as is customary in generative grammar. However, there is an alternative syntactic treatment that assumes that negation originates as (...) a higher predicate and is subject to a rule of lowering. I show that a syntactic theory of NOT-transportation is tenable and accounts for the problematic data if NEGraising is replaced, in the analysis of the cases considered here, by a rule of NEG-lowering. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has focused almost exclusively on propositional knowledge. This paper considers an underexplored area of epistemology, namely knowledge of persons: if propositional knowledge is a state of mind, consisting in a subject's attitude to a (true) proposition, the account developed here thinks of interpersonal knowledge as a state of minds, involving a subject's attitude to another (existing) subject. This kind of knowledge is distinct from propositional knowledge, but it exhibits a gradability characteristic of context-sensitivity, and admits of shifty thresholds. (...) It is supported by a wide range of unexplored linguistic data and intuitive cases; and it promises to illuminate debates within epistemology, philosophy of religion, and ethics. (shrink)

This paper examines three commentaries on the Śabdapariccheda in Kumārila Bhaṭṭa’s Ślokavārttika, along with the the seventeenth century Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā work, the Mānameyodaya. The focus is the Mīmāṃsā principle that only sentences communicate qualified meanings and Kumārila’s discussion of a potential counter-example to this claim–single words which appear to communicate such content. I argue that there is some conflict among commentators over precisely what Kumārila describes with the phrase sāmarthyād anumeyetvād, although he is most likely describing ellipsis completion through arthāpatti. (...) The paper attempts both a cogent exegesis and philosophical evaluation of the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā view of ellipsis completion, arguing that there remain internal tensions in the account of ellipsis preferred by the Bhāṭṭa, tensions which are not entirely resolved even by the late date of the Mānameyodaya. (shrink)

This paper deals with Austinian ifs of every stripe within classical logic. It is argued that they are truth-functional and the theory of conditional elements is used. Ellipsis is key. Corrects an error in Fulda (2010) in translation and therefore scope. -/- The PDF is made available gratis by the Publisher.

In his book Language in Context, Jason Stanley provides a novel solution to certain interpretational puzzles (Stanley, 2007). The aphonic approach, as we call it, hangs upon a substantial syntactic thesis. Here, we provide theoretical and empirical arguments against this particular syntactic thesis. Moreover, we demonstrate that the interpretational puzzles under question admit of a better solution under the explicit approach.

The term ‘ellipsis’ can be used to refer to a variety of phenomena: syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. In this article, I discuss the recent comprehensive survey by Stainton 2006 of these kinds of ellipsis with respect to the analysis of nonsententials and try to show that despite his trenchant criticisms and insightful proposal, some of the criticisms can be evaded and the insights incorporated into a semantic ellipsis analysis, making a ‘divide-and-conquer’ strategy to the properties of nonsententials feasible after all. (...) -/- Editor's comment: To find the contribution, please go to item 16 of the URL, which contains the full text. Professor Merchant has permitted this. (shrink)

This paper addresses a phenomenon in which certain word-parts can be omitted. The evidence shows that the full range of data cannot be captured by a sublexical analysis, since the phenomena can be observed both in phrasal and in lexical environments. It is argued that a form of deletion is involved, and that the phenomena—lexical or otherwise—are subject to the same phonological, semantic, and syntactic constraints. In the formalization that is proposed, all of the above constraints are cast in a (...) parallel and declarative fashion, in the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard and Sag Head-driven phrase structure grammar, 1994), since the various levels of linguistic description are locally and simultaneously available. Building on recent accounts of ellipsis, this paper proposes a unified and general account of word-part ellipsis and phrasal ellipsis. (shrink)

This is a review of a book by William S. Allen.

The debate between representationalists and anti-representationalists as I construe it in this chapter is a debate about whether truth-conditions are or should be assigned directly to natural language sentences (NLSs) – the anti-representationalist view – or whether they are or should be assigned instead to mental representations (MRs) that are related in some appropriate way to these NLSs. On the representationalist view, these MRs are related to NLSs in virtue of the fact that the MRs are the output of an (...) interpretive process that has as its input both representations of the lexico-syntactic structure of the NLSs and relevant non-linguistic assumptions that are accessible in the current conversational context. On this conception, language interpretation is a process of developing sentential forms into fully propositional forms, and it is these propositional forms that are the primary bearers of truth-conditional content, and are candidates for model-theoretic interpretation, not the NLSs themselves. (shrink)

VP ellipsis generally requires a syntactically matching antecedent. However, many documented examples exist where the antecedent is not appropriate. Kehler, 533–575. 2002, Coherence, Reference and the Theory of Grammer, CSLI Publications. Stanford.) proposed an elegant theory which predicts a syntactic antecedent for an elided VP is required only for a certain discourse coherence relation, not for cause-effect relations. Most of the data Kehler used to motivate his theory come from corpus studies and thus do not consist of true minimal pairs. (...) We report five experiments testing predictions of the coherence theory, using standard minimal pair materials. The results raise questions about the empirical basis for coherence theory because a syntactically-matching antecedent is preferred for all coherence relations, not just resemblance relations. Further, strict identity readings, which should not be available when a syntactic antecedent is required, are influenced by parallelism per se, holding the discourse coherence relation constant. This draws into question the causal role of coherence relations in processing VP ellipsis. (shrink)

In this essay, I explain how certain suggestions put forth by Frege. Wittgenstein, and Schlick regarding the interpretation of indexical expressions may be incorporated within a systematic semantic account. I argue that the 'hybrid' approach they propose is preferable to more conventional systems, in particular when it comes to the interpretation of cases of cross-contextual ellipsis. I also explain how the hybrid view entails certain important and independently motivated distinctions among contextually dependent expressions, for instance between 'here' and 'local'.

It is a near truism of philosophy of language that sentences are prior to words--that they are the only things that fundamentally have meaning. Robert's Stainton's study interrogates this idea, drawing on a wide body of evidence to argue that speakers can and do use mere words, not sentences, to communicate complex thoughts.

In what follows, I introduce a pragmatics-oriented approach to non-sentential speech, and defend it against two recent attacks. Among other things, I will rehearse and elaborate a defense against the idea that much, or even all, of such speech is actually syntactically elliptical—and hence should be treated semantically, rather than pragmatically. The chapter is structured as follows. In Section 1 I introduce the phenomenon, contrast semantic versus pragmatic approaches to it, and explain some of what hinges on which approach is (...) taken. In Section 2 I present Jason Stanley’s objections to the pragmatics-oriented approach, and his counterproposal that all truth-conditional effects of context on what is asserted can be traced to elements of underlying structure. In Section 3 I canvass numerous varieties of ellipsis. The focus in Section 3 will be on what kind of “ellipsis” is required if the pragmatics-oriented approach is actually to be rejected rather than being recast in other terms. In Section 4 I respond to.. (shrink)

Our first aim in this paper is to respond to four novel objections in Jason Stanley's 'Context and Logical Form'. Taken together, those objections attempt to debunk our prior claims that one can perform a genuine speech act by using a subsentential expression—where by 'subsentential expression' we mean an ordinary word or phrase, not embedded in any larger syntactic structure. Our second aim is to make it plausible that, pace Stanley, there really are pragmatic determinants of the literal truthconditional content (...) of speech acts. We hope to achieve this second aim precisely by defending the genuineness of subsentential speech acts. Given our two aims, it is necessary to highlight briefly their connection—which we do in the first part of the Introduction. Following that, we introduce Stanley's novel objections. This is the role of the second part of the Introduction. We offer our rebuttals in Section 2 (against 'shorthand') and Section 3 (against syntactic ellipsis, among other things). (shrink)

The paper investigates an elliptical construction, Clarification Ellipsis, that occurs in dialogue. We suggest that this provides data that demonstrates that updates resulting from utterances cannot be defined in purely semantic terms, contrary to the prevailing assumptions of existing approaches to dynamic semantics. We offer a computationally oriented analysis of the resolution of ellipsis in certain cases of dialogue clarification. We show that this goes beyond standard techniques used in anaphora and ellipsis resolution and requires operations on highly structured, linguistically (...) heterogeneous representations. We characterize these operations and the representations on which they operate. We offer an analysis couched in a version of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar combined with a theory of information states (IS) in dialogue. We sketch an algorithm for the process of utterance integration in IS which leads to grounding or clarification. The account proposed here has direct applications to the theory of attitude reports, an issue which is explored briefly in the concluding remarks of the paper. (shrink)

Fragmentary utterances such as short answers and subsentential XPs without linguistic antecedents are proposed to have fully sentential syntactic structures, subject to ellipsis. Ellipsis in these cases is preceded by A-movement of the fragment to a clause-peripheral position; the combination of movement and ellipsis accounts for a wide range of connectivity and anti-connectivity effects in these structures. Fragment answers furthermore shed light on the nature of islands, and contrast with sluicing in triggering island effects; this is shown to follow from (...) an articulated syntax and the PF theory of islands. Fragments without linguistic antecedents are argued to be compatible with an ellipsis analysis, and do not support direct interpretation approaches to these phenomena. (shrink)

Despite the attention that various forms of ellipsis have received inthe literature, the conditions under which a representation of anutterance may serve as a suitable referent for interpreting subsequentelliptical forms remain poorly understood. This fundamental questionremains as a point of contention, particularly because there are datato support various conflicting approaches that attempt to characterizethese conditions within a single module of language processing. Weshow a previously unnoticed pattern in VP-ellipsis data with respectto the type of coherence relation extant between the antecedentand (...) elided clauses. This pattern is explained by an account of howellipsis resolution processes interact with the inference processesunderlying the establishment of these relations. The analysis alsoexplains a similar yet distinct pattern in gapping constructions whichare not accounted for by purely syntactic approaches. Finally, wediscuss event reference and compare the resulting account to thedichotomy of types of anaphora posited by HanSag. (shrink)

Speakers often use ordinary words and phrases, unembedded in any sentence, to perform speech acts—or so it appears. In some cases appearances are deceptive: The seemingly lexical/phrasal utterance may really be an utterance of a syntactically eplliptical sentence. I argue however that, at least sometimes, plain old words and phrases are used on their own. The use of both words/phrases and elliptical sentences leads to two consequences: 1. Context must contribute more to utterance meaning than is often supposed. Here's why: (...) The semantic type of normal words and phrases is non-proppositional, even after the usual contextual features are added . Yet an utterance of a word/phrase can be fully propositional. 2. Often, a hearer does not need to know the exact identity of the expression uttered, to understand an utterance. The reason: Typically, words/phrases in context will sound the same, and mean the same, as some elliptical sentence token. (shrink)

Systematic semantic ambiguities result from the interaction of the two operations that are involved in resolving ellipsis in the presence of scoping elements such as quantifiers and intensional operators: scope determination for the scoping elements and resolution of the elided relation. A variety of problematic examples previously noted - by Sag, Hirschbüihler, Gawron and Peters, Harper, and others - all have to do with such interactions. In previous work, we showed how ellipsis resolution can be stated and solved in equational (...) terms. Furthermore, this equational analysis of ellipsis provides a uniform framework in which interactions between ellipsis resolution and scope determination can be captured. As a consequence, an account of the problematic examples follows directly from the equational method. The goal of this paper is merely to point out this pleasant aspect of the equational analysis, through its application to these cases. No new analytical methods or associated formalism are presented, with the exception of a straightforward extension of the equational method to intensional logic. (shrink)

As the journal is effectively defunct, I am uploading a full-text copy, but only of my abstract and article, and some journal front matter. -/- Note that the pagination in the PDF version differs from the official pagination because A4 and 8.5" x 11" differ. -/- Traditionally, imperatives have been handled with deontic logics, not the logic of propositions which bear truth values. Yet, an imperative is issued by the speaker to cause (stay) actions which change the state of affairs, (...) which is, in turn, described by propositions that bear truth values. Thus, ultimately, imperatives affect truth values. In this paper, we put forward an idea that allows us to reason with imperatives using classical logic by constructing a one-to-one correspondence between imperatives and a particular class of declaratives. (shrink)

The restricted semantic ellipsis hypothesis, we have argued, is committed to an enormous number of multiply ambiguous expressions, the introduction of which gains us no extra explanatory power. We should, therefore, reject it. We should also spurn the original version since: (a) it entails the restricted version and (b) it incorrectly declares that, whenever a speaker makes an assertion by uttering an unembedded word or phrase, the expression uttered has illocutionary force.Once rejected, the semantic ellipsis hypothesis cannot account for the (...) many exceptions to the syntactic ellipsis hypothesis. So, we can safely infer that the Claim is true.(1)The Claim: Speakers can make assertions by uttering ordinary, unembedded, words and phrases.To the degree that the Claim reallyis in tension with the primacy of sentences (i.e., the view that (a) only sentences can be used to make assertions and (b) only sentences are meaningful in isolation) this doctrine must also be rejected. (shrink)

While "A needs X" often calls for supplementation by the Y X is needed for, Thomson, Wiggins and Braybrooke have argued that there is a sense of "need" for which this is unnecessary. But Gricean conventions for conversation allow us to use ellipsis in a unified account of "need" while explaining the data Thomson and Wiggins appeal to: nondetatchment of bare needs from more fully specified ones, avoidance of serious harm as a default filling of the Y-slot, and the apparent (...) normativeness of some need-statements. Their detailed discussions also undermine the utility of demarcating a sense of "fundamental" need. (shrink)

We present a new method for characterizing the interpretive possibilities generated by elliptical constructions in natural language. Unlike previous analyses, which postulate ambiguity of interpretation or derivation in the full clause source of the ellipsis, our analysis requires no such hidden ambiguity. Further, the analysis follows relatively directly from an abstract statement of the ellipsis interpretation problem. It predicts correctly a wide range of interactions between ellipsis and other semantic phenomena such as quantifier scope and bound anaphora. Finally, although the (...) analysis itself is stated nonprocedurally, it admits of a direct computational method for generating interpretations. (shrink)

It is well-known that constructions involving ellipsis share many properties with constructions that involve phonological reduction. The similarity between ECs and PRCs is semantic: the interpretation of both is constrained by the interpretation of an antecedent. Rooth and Tancredi have pointed out that this similarity follows from an independently needed theory of focus.

One of the interests in the Gapping construction is the headache it causes for those trying to get constituency structure right. On the assumption that Gapping, like other processes of sentence grammar, respects constituency, it is very hard to deliver the right constituents in cases such as (1). (1) a. Some consider him honest and others consider him pleasant. b. The faculty brought scotch to the party and the students brought beer to the party. c. The girls occasionally ate peanuts (...) and the boys occasionally ate breath mints. (Understand the material in strikeouts to be Gapped.) Everything else tells us that the Gapped strings in (1) should not form a constituent which excludes the material left behind. Yet, the fact that only when the verb Gaps may the other material too suggests just the opposite. That is, if we deny that the verb forms a constituent with the other material, and let Gapping apply to each of the elided constituents independently, we would have no way to express this dependency. If we let Gapping only elide constituents that house the verb, on the other hand, it follows. (shrink)

Masculine/feminine pairs of human-denoting nouns in Greek fall into three distinct classes under predicative ellipsis: those that license ellipsis of their counterpart regardless of gender, those that only license ellipsis of a same-gendered noun, and those in which the masculine noun of the pair licenses ellipsis of the feminine version, but not vice versa. The three classes are uniform in disallowing any gender mismatched ellipses in argument uses, however. This differential behavior of gender in nominal ellipsis can be captured by (...) positing that human-denoting nouns in Greek, while syntactically and morphological uniform in showing a masculine/feminine contrast, do not all encode this contrast in their semantics. Under a semantic identity theory of ellipsis, the attested variation in nominal ellipses in Greek is posited to derive from the fact that nominal ellipsis has two possible sources: a nominal constituent can be elided (true ellipsis), or a null nominal proform can be used (model-theoretic anaphora). (shrink)

It is well understood that the analysis of elliptical phenomena has the potential to inform our understanding of the syntax-semantics interface, as it forces the analyst to confront directly the mechanisms for generating meanings without the usual forms that give rise to them. But facts from ellipsis have an equal potential to illuminate our understanding of the structure of the lexicon. A close investigation of nominal ellipses in Greek shows that gender features are not all created equal: the values of (...) some gender features (masculine, feminine) on some nominals must be distinguished from the very same values as they are encoded on other nouns. This conclusion is forced upon us by the following generalization: (1) Gender and ellipsis generalization: When gender is variable (as on determiners, clitics, adjectives, and some nominals under certain conditions), it may be ignored under ellipsis. When gender is invariant (on nouns in argument positions, and on some nominals in predicative uses), it may not be ignored under ellipsis. I argue that this generalization finds a relatively straightforward account in a derivational framework using an LF-copy theory of ellipsis identity and resolution, but not under semantic or LF-identity accounts (whether these latter are.. (shrink)

The term “Reduced Conditional” is coined by Schwarz (1996, 1998, 2000) to designate a certain kind of ellipsis that may occur in the consequent of a Conditional in German, as illustrated in (1): (1a) is a Full Conditional (FC, henceforth) and (1b) is its Reduced Conditional (RC) counterpart.

In addition to the standard ellipsis process known as VP-ellipsis, another ellipsis process, known as pseudo-gapping, was first brought to the fore-front in the 1970’s by Sag (1976) and N. Levin (1986). This process elides subparts of a VP, as in (1): (1) Although I don’t like steak, I do___pizza. Developing ideas of K.S. Jayaseelan (Jayaseelan (1990)), Howard Lasnik has developed an analysis in which pseudo-gapping, which, in some instances, looks as though it is simply deleting a verb, is in (...) fact deletion of a verb phrase, so that pseudo-gapping is really a probe into the structure of the verb phrase. I will examine pseudo-gapping in detail, and will show that it truly is a gold mine of insight into a number of fundamental issues in syntax. More concretely, I will demonstrate that a careful, detailed analysis of this process will bear on the derivational level at which Principle A of the binding theory applies, as well as the amount of explicit encoding within syntactic representations of informational structure, particularly focus. The paper will also re-assess Lasnik’s conclusion that pseudo-gapping provides evidence for Larson’s (1988) V-raising to a higher empty V position, a case of head movement, and will show that the movement involved is actually a case of remnant movement, or XP-movement. (shrink)